3 February, 2023
Joel Fishbane’s novel, The Thunder of Giants, is now available from St. Martin’s Press. His short fiction has been published in a variety of magazines, including Ploughshares, Witness, New England Review, and the Saturday Evening Post. For more information, you are welcome to visit www.joelfishbane.net
3 February, 2023
Katherine Joshi teaches academic writing at the University of Maryland, where she received her MFA in fiction writing in 2014. Her fiction has previously appeared in Big Muddy, Glasschord, and Journey, under her maiden name Kipp. Originally from Tennessee, she now live in Northern Virginia with her husband, son, and nearly toothless cat.
3 February, 2023
Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. She is now a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in America magazine, The Dewdrop, Plainsongs, FOLIO, HeartWood, Ruminate, Smartish Pace, The Good Life Review, and others.
3 February, 2023
Brian A. Salmons writes in Orlando, Florida. His work is in The Ekphrastic Review, Autofocus Lit, Stereo Stories, Arkansas International, Memoir Mixtapes, Sunlight Press, Poets Reading the News, O:JA&L, and YellowJacket Press and TL;DR Press anthologies. He also edits and reads for Autofocus Lit. Find him on IG @teacup_should_be and Twitter @brianasalmons
3 February, 2023
Sophia Naylor’s plays include All-One!, Blood and Dolly, Boxed, My Little Big Brother, The Sermon, and Play-Bot. Her works have been produced and/or developed by the Pear Theatre, Women in SOLOdarity, PCSF, MN Fringe Festival, and Local Color. Sophia co-founded the murder mystery theater company The Clue Collective, for which she wrote and customized shows. She earned an Honors Theater degree from Swarthmore College, specializing in playwriting, dramaturgy, acting, and Shakespeare. You can find her online at sfnaylor.com.
3 February, 2023
Katherine Varga is a writer, theatre critic, and teaching artist living in Rochester, NY. Her plays have been performed in seven states. Her prose has appeared in Passengers Journal, as well as the Democrat & Chronicle and Rochester City News. On an ideal day, you’ll find her biking to the public library.
3 February, 2023
Ashley Warlick is the author of four novels the most recent of which is The Arrangement published in 2016. The recipient of an NEA Fellowship and the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, her work has appeared in The Oxford American, McSweeney’s, Redbook, and Garden and Gun, among others. She is a partner at M. Judson, Booksellers and Storytellers in Greenville, SC.
Warlick teaches fiction at Queens University of Charlotte’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing Program.
19 May, 2019
Following the curve of the Great Lawn
I turn towards your public bed
The bench with the plaque from the Levy family, remembering loving parents
The wooden frame of the Delacorte Theater throwing a shadow blanket over you
Your college coat, graduated into frayed hope
I sit at your feet, holding two coffees
Heat escaping, pushed by this November morning’s wind
Mingling with your breath while you sleep
I touch your sneaker and call your name
Wait a few seconds as the coffee warms my thigh
You stir, eyes flutter
You see me, moment of almost pure stillness before you reach up your hand
I place a coffee cup inside your grasp, our fingers touch
I blink quickly, cough, ask how you are
You sit up, cup to lip
I can wait for an answer
Still seeing all the versions of you
Beneath the unshaved unwashed face
The “ifs “and “did-I-do-enoughs”
Hanging between us, a torn curtain never to rise
On a play neither could rewrite
Praying I am dead before it closes
19 May, 2019
A needle and thread:
Imagine yourself in your hand,
loving what you want to mend. That’s easy.
What’s hard is pulling yourself through.
A mirror:
Be a backwards Susanna. Watch old men stroke
their beards while you bathe. Learn to love them.
They are your wet nurse, your supple, your seethe.
An ecstatic:
Hold the storm to your belly, feel it
sizzle and rupture like the first man you loved.
Returning, tell the sky what you’ve proved.
The wolf:
Learn what it’s like to give birth in the snow,
lap placenta from fur, feel five sets of teeth pull
at your teats. Carry always that hunger.
A riddle:
Be your own bride. Speak tenderly
to your shyness. Touch the shivering breast.
That’s your answer, your tryst.
A closed curtain:
Remember the first time you bled.
How, after that, you tried to keep everything in.
What you hide is shame and desire, its twin.
A palimpsest:
Be enamored by the promise of skin.
Like a tyrant, let someone else stroke your fear.
Part your knees. There’s salvation here.
19 May, 2019
Rebecca Cross has an MA in creative and critical writing from the University of Sussex. She works as an editor in New England, where she lives with her partner and one very spoiled cat. Her work has appeared in The Woven Tale Press, Always Crashing, Breath and Shadow, Monstering, and other publications.